Tracy Huth will leave his position as the Oakland University Director of Athletics as of January 31st, the school announced last week.
This is significant to swimming because Huth is the man who led the Oakland swim program to its current level of success as one of the country’s best-built, most stable NCAA Division I mid-major swim programs.
The team moves into a new conference this season, but they have won the last 14 Summit League Championships.
Huth has been affiliated with the program for some 30 years as an athlete, coach, and administrator. He still ranks 10th on the school’s all-time list in the 1650 free with a 15:53.44 from 1983. As a swimmer, he was a three-time NCAA Division II Swimmer of the Year, and won the 200 IM and 400 IM NCAA Championships all four years of his career – which earned him a spot in Oakland’s Hall of Honor. He’s the only swimmer in any NCAA Division to accomplish that quadruple double.
Huth took over as head coach of the women’s program in the 1987-1988 season, a position in which he remained until 1997. During his time, the Oakland women won all 5 of their NCAA Division II national team championships, and they only once in his last 9 years as the head of that program finished lower than 1st in the GLIAC conference. He was then enshrined in the school’s Hall of Honor for a second time, as a coach.
Huth’s tenure as a coach coincided with the same year where the Oakland teams were suspended after an out-of-control party that was followed by a student being killed in a car accident.
He was a part of the administration that oversaw Oakland’s move from the NCAA Division II to a strong mid-major NCAA Division I program, across many sports, and has had his hand in most of the major athletic accomplishments of the school over the last 35 years.
He was also in the administration when Pete Hovland took the success he’d built with the men’s swimming & diving program and in the 2001-2002 season merged it with the legacy of success that Huth had built with the women’s team.
Most importantly, he was an understanding ear for swimming in a prominent office. He had been involved in the Oakland swim team for years, and was one of the first big stars of Pete Hovland’s tenure at the school. One can only imagine that this had a strong continuing impact on Oakland’s recent run of success.
The program will continue on, and there’s no indication that its success will falter just because of this move, but swimming as a sport has lost a voice in a high-ranking NCAA office, and it’s worth noting.
All of the positive comments above are right on target. Our teams competed when I was at Michigan and he coached at Oakland in the 80’s. I had the pleasure of working with him on the NCAA Swimming and Diving Committee. He is a smart, highly capable leader….and an even better person. As for the reason he is leaving…yeah, it might be to be with his wife and soon-to-be born first child; however, ….today’s highs: Rochester, MI – 4; Los Angeles – 72. Seriously, I hope Tracy finds a way to stay involved with collegiate athletics. We need people like him in positions where they can improve the experience of all student-athletes and their coaches.
He is going to be w/ his wife in California who is expecting.
Shawn beat me to it….Tracy’s wife is the assistant women’s basketball coach at UCLA and they have had a long distance marriage since she took that position 3 years ago. They are also expecting their 1st child together.
Not only did Tracy do a great job at Oakland he served as chair of the NCAA swimming and diving committee and was part of a group that put an end to the technical suits in collegiate swimming.
So no dirt here…here’s wishing Tracy and Jennie the best!
My first thought was indeed that he was caught up in or in the crossfire of the Beckie Francis fiasco:
http://www.usatoday.com/story/sports/ncaaw/2013/11/11/oakland-says-womens-basketball-coach-beckie-francis-fired-for-mentally-abusing-players/3497569/
http://www.theoaklandpress.com/sports/20131112/emotional-abuse-among-reasons-oakland-university-says-former-coach-beckie-francis-was-fired
Does the swimswam team know more about this and that is why they put the steps down in quotes or is it just assumed that something weird had to have happened based on the timing?
It’s mostly a commentary on our general disdain for the euphemisms for “fired” in sports. We don’t know if Tracy was fired or not, because “stepped down” means a huge range of separations of employment.
We haven’t done any investigations or reporting on the details of it, because it’s not really all that important to our particular audience, but I’ll say this: Beckie Francis “stepped down” last year as the women’s basketball coach after Tracy investigated allegations of psychological abuse by her players.
Beckie Francis’ husband, also the president of the university, retired on the same day.